BILL WOOLF: Twenty years ago, Congress passed landmark legislation called the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, which started our journey in this country to address the issue of human trafficking.
Human trafficking is an extremely pervasive crime that continues to affect and impact communities all across this great country. And while we have made good strides over the last 20 years in addressing this issue, arming law enforcement with the tools and resources that they need to go after the offenders, and building up victim services organizations to be able to appropriately serve the victims of this horrendous crime, but there is still much work to be done. And we here at the Office for Victims of Crime recognize the support that those on the front lines need to combat this issue.
So we are so proud to support and fund the Human Trafficking Capacity Building Center. The Center is set up to coach and mentor new organizations or existing organizations looking to grow their capacity, to stabilize themselves, become able to engage with federal funding, to be able to provide those necessary services for victims of human trafficking.
We are really excited to announce the launch of the Human Trafficking Capacity Building Center's website. This website will provide a list of services available to support your organization or Tribe's anti-trafficking work.
The Center's website will host a resource library filled with entry level content on topics like grant funding, victim identification, and sample documents for formalizing partnerships and managing relationships.
Relationships are key to combating human trafficking as we work to build collaborative partnerships to address this issue. This is not something that one discipline is going to be able to address; law enforcement can't do it on their own, victim service providers can't do it on their own.
So it is about coming together and the Human Trafficking Capacity Building Center will be able to provide the resources necessary so that you can build capacity in your organization to address this heinous crime.
We've come a long way in 20 years but we know we still have a long way to go.
So thank you on behalf of the Office for Victims of Crime for all that you do to stand up and support those victims, and we hope that you'll find this resource to be valuable.
Thank you.